Articles | Volume 12, issue 6
https://doi.org/10.5194/os-12-1179-2016
https://doi.org/10.5194/os-12-1179-2016
Research article
 | 
15 Nov 2016
Research article |  | 15 Nov 2016

Sub-basin-scale sea level budgets from satellite altimetry, Argo floats and satellite gravimetry: a case study in the North Atlantic Ocean

Marcel Kleinherenbrink, Riccardo Riva, and Yu Sun

Data sets

CSR-RL05 time-varying gravity field S. Bettadpur and the CSR Level-2 Team ftp://ftp.csr.utexas.edu/outgoing/grace/

ITSG-GRACE2016 time-varying gravity field T. Mayer-Gürr,S. Behzadpour, M. Ellmer, A. Kvas, B. Klinger, and N. Zehentner http://pmd.gfz-potsdam.de/icgem/showshort.php?id=escidoc:1697893

ICE-6G GIA Stokes coefficients D. F. Argus, W. R. Peltier,R. Drummond, and A. W. Moore http://www.atmosp.physics.utoronto.ca/~peltier/data.php

Scripps objectively mapped T/S grids D. Roemmich, and J. Gilson http://sio-argo.ucsd.edu/RG_Climatology.html

RADS along-track altimetry data R. Scharroo, E. W. Leuliette, J. L. Lillibridge, D. Byrne, M. C. Naeije, and G. T. Mitchum http://rads.tudelft.nl/rads/rads.shtml

Mercator Ocean Glorys 2V3 reanalyses G. Garric, L. Parent, S. Masina, A. Storto,H. Zuo, and M. Balmaseda http://marine.copernicus.eu/

The GEBCO One Minute Grid, version 2.0 BODC https://www.bodc.ac.uk/data/online_delivery/gebco/

GSFC 1-min distance-to-coastline grid R. P. Stumpf http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/docucomp/page?xml=NOAA/IOOS/PacIOOS/iso/xml/dist2coast_1deg.xml&view=getDataView& header=none

Argo profile data NODC ftp://ftp.nodc.noaa.gov/pub/data.nodc/argo/data/

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Short summary
Satellite altimetry measures changes in sea level, while satellite gravimetry measures mass changes, and one can infer steric sea level from Argo temperature and salinity profiles. For the first time, it is shown that in most cases the mass and steric components match the total sea level measured by altimetry on a sub-basin scale in terms of trend, annual amplitude and interannual variability. We also find that the choice of gravity field filter is essential to close the budget.